Fidel Castro’s Health Keeps Improving, says Cuba’s First VP

After touring Argentina’s pavilion at the fair grounds, Raul Castro who is also the minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, told reporters that Fidel is even taking exercises and he keeps making phone calls quite often.

Following the inaugural ceremony of the fair at Havana’s San Carlos de
la Cabaña fortress, annual venue of the book event, Raul Castro,
Argentina’s Culture Secretary Jose Nun, and the president of the Cuban Book Institute Iroel Sanchez inaugurated the Argentinean pavilion. Among the samples exhibited at the pavilion, there is a collective testimony about the crimes and horrors committed by the dictatorship that ruled the South American nation after 1976.

The Cuban Vice President also visited the stand of the Santa Fe
province whose governor, engineer Jorge Obeid offered him information
on the house of Ernesto Che Guevara in the Argentinean locality of
Rosario, and which was visited by presidents Fidel Castro and Hugo
Chavez last year.

Raul Castro recalled passages of the revolutionary struggle and his
first meeting with Che in Mexico as they got prepared to free Cuba from the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship.

The Cuban First Vice President also exchanged with several Argentinean
personalities, such as lawmaker Miguel Bonasso, writher and journalist
Stella Calloni, the president of the Association of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Hebe de Bonafini, as well as with Argentinean ambassador to Cuba Dario Alexander.

Also present were the members of the Political Buro of Cuba?s Communist Party like Esteban Lazo, Carlos Lage, Ricardo Alarcon, Abel Prieto, Pedro Saez.

The International Book Fair will run until March 11 and will extend to 40 cities throughout the country. More than eight million books will be offered this year, including 1,000 new titles.

This year, the fair is dedicated to Cuban scholars Eduardo Lopez Cueva
and Cesar Lopez. The guest of honor is Argentina, a country
that will be represented at the fair by a large delegation.

As every year, one of the main attractions is the children’s
pavilion, with an extensive cultural program of arts, entertainment and literature.

David Vina, Noe Jitrik, Luisa Valenzuela, Graciela Duffau, Horacio
Gonzalez, Lilia Ferreira, Víctor Ego Ducrot and Juan Carlos Baglietto
are among the Argentinean scholars and artists who are participating
at the fair.

As a special gift, Argentina will distribute 250,000 copies of an
anthology that includes renowned Argentine authors such as Julio
Cortazar, Jorge Luis Borges, Abelardo Castillo, Carlos Gorostiza and
María Elena Walsh.

This year the fair will also include a second-hand bookstore with more
than 7,000 titles.